FOBM Video: After The Deal: Gordon Crovitz on the NWS-DJ Transition

Given Rupert Murdoch’s comments this week about expecting WSJ.com to go free, we thought we’d share the video of a Q&A by executive editor Staci D. Kramer with Gordon Crovitz from our recent conference on the Future of Business Media. Crovitz, a former journalist, is the publisher of the WSJ Franchise and EVP, Dow Jones (NYSE: NWS). (The original coverage of the session is here.)

— Part 1: Crovitz explains the current hybrid premium-free model for WSJ.com and the WSJ Digital Network; profit margin for online versus print; using WSJ.com to extend the print edition — almost every new subscriber is a subscriber to both; the strategy being evaluated now: “Is there a way for use to be both the best and the biggest?”; premium services — “DJ brings in a half-billion in subscriptions services revenue;” the MarketWatch acquisition two years later –“extraordinarily successful” for us; cross-platform ad sales.

— Part II: Creating more online verticals; News Corp. effect on DJ’s own re-org; News Corp. funding; journalists’ salaries — “If the highest-paid journalists don’t work at DJ where would they work? … I expect significant investments in the Journal; Fox Business Network-CNBC; gaining traffic through portals; emphasizing the journalism — “It is incumbent on us to figure out how we maintaining large, sophisticated news departments in a world where we’re compared with others who don’t have that expense;” MKTW-Fox Business Network collaboration; DJ’s global operations and how News Corp. will help with global expansion — “we’ll be able to do at a much more rapid pace.” Also, when will the Journal go free?